Nature gave us an early April Fool's Day gift of snow, beginning mid-morning yesterday, and continuing throughout the day.  It was one of those rare days when we were firmly ensconced in the house, happy to watch the snow and do absolutely nothing about it.  A day for catching up on reading, paperwork, and still life photography.

One of the things that is intriguing to me is the occurrence in nature of things that are soft and hard, strong and seemingly weak, linear and random.  And I enjoy creating still life images with the same idea in mind.  My husband, Fred, with his background in architecture, aviation, and engineering, has an extremely keen eye for structure.  The Navajo-Churro wool rugs that he weaves make perfect backdrops and give contrast to flowers and food and all sorts of softer objects.  And yesterday was the perfect day to experiment with those ideas.

Fred's "end of the year" striped rug (Rug #325) - a symmetrical blending of all the smaller pieces of wool he collected from his year's weaving - provided an interesting counterpoint to sunflowers.

sunflowers and rug 325  

sunflower and rug 325

Peruvian lilies highlight part of the architectural detail in Rug 318.

Peruvian lily and rug 318

Those same lilies soften the bold details and colors of what is almost an "eye dazzler" rug, #318.

Peruvian lily and rug 315

Peruvian lily and rug 315 # 3

All of the images included here were made with natural light from several different sources, punctuated by lighter or heavier cloud cover.  Regardless of the weather, there is almost always a good time, place, and subject matter with which to experiment in life's photographic laboratory.

Thanks to Connie, Cristina and Ben, Wayne, Ingrid, Lisa, Maria, Dianne, Steve, Wayne, and Jean and Sam, and Fred for adding to the photographic discussion this week.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image@